


Reason, But No Rhyme

by HenryMercury



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Medical Professionals, Morning After, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 06:03:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14302395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: Pansy's quarter-century of existence has taught her that everything happens for a reason; it's just that the reasons usually aren't half as profound as people want them to be.





	Reason, But No Rhyme

"Do you think this happened for a reason, Parkinson?" Hermione asks.

"You can call me Pansy, you know. After you fucked me with that ridiculous glass thing it's actually the least you could do."

Hermione sniffs. "You didn't find it so ridiculous last night. And anyway, you haven't answered my question. Pansy."

Pansy asks her to use her first name every time they meet like this, and it never holds, but it's nice of her to try.

"What, whether I've woken up in bed with you for any reason? Yes; I'd say there are reasons for that."

Pansy's quarter-century of existence has taught her that everything happens for a reason; it's just that the reasons usually aren't half as profound as people want them to be.

"It isn't like I believe in _fate_ ," she adds, at the look on Hermione's face.

Predictably, Hermione relaxes once superstition is off the table. Pansy thinks she'd struggle to discount predestination so intractably if her own best friend had been the subject of a major prophecy—but then prophecies are so often self-fulfilling once they've been seen, been heard.

"There are always reasons, though, Granger. Shitty reasons, often. I'm here because some error or coincidence had us seated together at the ASMM Conference, and because I drank three firewhiskies at the cocktail event afterwards, and because you give head like nobody I've ever met."

Hermione laughs at that. It's a lazy musical sound that matches well with the yellow, late-morning sunlight streaming in past the half-rolled crème Roman shades (it's well into Autumn here in Sydney, but it's still so bloody hot it could be Summer). She sprawls out over the plush bed of Pansy's hotel room, masses of thick, dark curls spilling across the crisp white sheets beneath her. She sighs, but says nothing.

Pansy frowns, sitting up against the bed head. The sheet covering her falls, and she doesn't miss the way Hermione's eyes snag on her bared nipples.

"Why do you ask? Do you think there was some other reason for this?"

Hermione bites her lip. That beautiful, plush bottom lip that Pansy does so love to feel against her own.

"I don't believe in fate either, Parkinson. Pansy. And... well, I don't think we can rely on coincidences. That's all."

That is patently _not_ all. Pansy calls her on it. When Hermione seems reluctant to elaborate, Pansy climbs out of the bed and cracks open one of little glass bottles of sparkling water from the mini bar. She's not hungover, but an evening of drinking and networking followed by a night of vigorous sex and a thirty degree day heating up outside are enough to get anyone more than a little thirsty. She pays no outward attention to Hermione. She knows Hermione is looking at her, though—not because she can feel her gaze, or anything like that, but because Pansy's naked arse is in full view of the bed and even Hermione Granger is not above ogling when she's been given permission to do so.

Pansy hears Hermione draw breath to speak, and silently congratulates herself.

"What if we hadn't been seated together?" Hermione asks. "Would this still have happened?"

"There are still too many variables to know that, don't you think?" Pansy takes her time drinking the Schweppes, setting the empty bottle down on the counter next to the television screen, and then at last turns to face Hermione again.

"Well, yes."

Hermione sounds _nervous_ , which is a new one. The woman hadn't even been nervous when Pansy had first visited the St Mungo's research division to consult and correctly identified the smooth, blown-glass paperweight on her desk as rather more than a paperweight. That had been three years ago, and there'd been none of their current understanding between them then. Only old bad blood. Only scabbed wounds, still undecided as to whether they were going to heal or break back open.

"But it would be harder to know," Hermione presses on. "Which is why I didn't want to wait and find out. Why I took the liberty of..."

Pansy doesn't need her to finish the sentence for the realisation to hit. "... _you_ had me seated with the British contingent! On purpose! But how?"

"I spent some time in Australia right after the war, and my... work here required some interaction with the Magimedical community. I met Jordan, who's now involved in organising events for the Society of Magical Medicine."

"You schemer," Pansy smirks. "I'll certainly take that as a compliment."

"You should," says Hermione. There's a change in her tone of voice that has Pansy whipping her gaze back to Hermione's face with urgency. Her snark isn't being met with snark, and she barely knows what to do. Hermione sounds—and looks, too, with her wide brown eyes and the resolute set of her jaw—painfully earnest. Like she's serious. Serious about _Pansy_.

This is, of course, impossible. Although Pansy has laboured to make a better name for herself since their Hogwarts days, there's still a difference between being a tolerable person and a great lay, and being someone Hermione could actually want to _be with_. Besides that, Hermione's research is firmly attached to St Mungo's, and Pansy has a home in Berlin with consultations taking her far and wide. There are very real reasons they only see each other a few times a year, at conferences, consultations and, once, at Blaise Zabini and Ginny Weasley's engagement party.

Pansy was unable to attend the wedding, in the end, thanks to an urgent, marathon surgery in Chicago. She'd been in midair as they said their vows, too fucking wrecked to put up with portkeying, let alone international apparition. Drinking abominable airline tea out of an abominable airline plastic cup and staring out the window at the cloudscape. Resolutely not thinking about the child whose magically atrophied heart she had held in her hands just hours earlier and been unable to repair.

She is still sometimes accused of lacking a heart—though it's sort of nice knowing she's not the only cardiothoracic surgeon for whom this is the case. At least she understands, then, exactly what she is supposedly missing. Better than any of the people telling her she's heartless, she understands.

"What are you trying to tell me?" Pansy asks. She'd put forth a few hypotheses, ordinarily, but all she's got right now is the idea that Hermione likes her more than she's previously indicated, and that's not something she'll voice. The hope of it is too finely spun, too tender.

"That it's not enough for me, anymore, just to wait and see when we'll be together next. Whether it will be January in Singapore, or August in Paris, or November in New York. Or never. And I don't like the thought of never."

"Neither do I," Pansy admits, cautiously.

"In our line of work, we take action. We figure out what's going on, and what _should_ be happening, and then we come up with a plan. What I want is to know what's going on with you and me. And... what would, ideally, be going on. I want to take action, instead of drifting and hoping for the best."

"What kind of best are you hoping for?"

Pansy's starting to feel awkward, standing there in only her skin. It's beyond nakedness, actually, when the only things she's wearing are the marks left behind by Hermione's mouth as it sucked on her neck, Hermione's fingers on her wrist as she gripped it through a wrenching orgasm. Pansy considers going to sit down on the bed again, considers the stiff-looking chair in the corner of the room, and eventually elects to hover by the window. She looks down at the street below, moving with cars and pedestrians. Further away, she can catch glimpses of the harbour. The sky is as blue as it is in all the postcards. She swears she can feel the sun burning her after half a minute there.

"Usually, when I hope for the best, the best means that we'll meet. We'll do... what we do. What we're doing now. Do you..." there's a rustling as Hermione shifts on the bed. "Do you hope for that too, Pansy?"

Pansy looks back at her, at the use of her first name. It didn't sound forced out, overthought or awkward, like it was difficult for Hermione to really think of her as Pansy instead of Parkinson. It sounded almost accidental, and the look on Hermione's face confirmed it.

"Yeah," Pansy breathed in reply. "Yeah, since that first time in your office, I always do."

"We're in science, not divination. Why leave ourselves running on hope alone, like hope will ever give us more than it's already giving us?"

Pansy's feet take her closer to the bed again. She can't help it. She tells herself she's shying away from the sun, the heat of it, but the look in Hermione's eyes is no less bright or hot.

"I didn't realise you wanted any more than this." The words spill out, and Pansy doesn't bother trying to stop them. They're true, after all, and they'll need to be said if they're to get anywhere. And Merlin, Pansy wants to get wherever she and Hermione seem to be going today.

"To be fair, I didn't either," Hermione gives a little shrug. "It took me some time to understand that it wasn't just the excitement of an illicit conference hook-up that made it so hard to get you out of my head."

Pansy leans forward onto the bed—Hermione's side of the bed—one knee first, then the other. She suspends herself over Hermione's legs, crawls up over her body until their faces are inches apart.

"What was it?" Pansy whispers, and tries not to feel like she's hanging from a cliff, waiting to find out whether Hermione plans to pull her up or watch her fall.

"I think," Hermione says, the hint of a breathy laugh in her voice, "Merlin help me, but I think I want to _date_ you, Pansy Parkinson. And I really want to do it more than three times a year."

Pansy lets out the breath she's been holding all at once. She grins, at first because she can't fucking help it, and then because Hermione's grinning up at her in response, and it's a cycle they can't break, just looking at each other and _feeling_.

"Four times?" Pansy suggests, raising an eyebrow.

"Five, even," Hermione says, and pushes herself up so that she and Pansy are pressed together from hips to lips.

Pansy kisses her, hard, redistributes her weight so she's sitting astride Hermione's thighs and can put her arms to work running up and down Hermione's sides, teasing at her breasts, running through her hair, all while she loses herself in Hermione's mouth.

"Five?" Pansy echoes breathlessly when they finally break apart. "Let's not get _greedy_ , Granger."

Before she knows it, Hermione's toppling them sideways and positioning herself over Pansy, pinning her hands to the pillow above her head. She looks down at Pansy with a hunger Pansy knows very well, and a tenderness she doesn't think she's ever seen directed at her before.

"Too late," Hermione says.

Pansy agrees.


End file.
